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.After all, if the divine is necessarily co-involved with the human, if it is something that human nature mightdemand for its own completion, in what sense is it something morethan the human? As Aquinas put it, There is an end for which man isprepared by God which surpasses the proportion of human nature,that is, eternal life, which consists in the vision of God by His essence(De ver.q.27 a.2).The phrase exceeding the proportion of humannature (naturae humanae proportionem excedens) does not necessar-ily evoke static, parallel realms, though to the mind of de Lubac it wasjust such a picture that impinged itself upon the interpreters ofAquinas.De Lubac insisted that the Pauline paradox did not require thecreation of layered realms and, further, that the earliest strands ofChristian discourse did not speak of two realms.Wittgenstein isparticularly helpful here.Language, because it operates in the eddiesof language games, often impels us to say certain things, leaving uswith an inadequate picture unless these games are balanced by othersuch games.Grace can be gratuitous, an oVer to humanity thattranscends humanity without being an object imported into ourrealm from that of another.It s the wrong linguistic picture thatsuggests that objects are most real.De Lubac struggled to free the-ology from a dual-tiered image of God s relationship to the world,going so far as to suggest that the two tiers, which were designed tosafeguard the gratuity of grace, had led in the modern world to theutter gratuitousness, the superXuity, of grace.In other words, mod-ern scientiWc thought will inevitably slide back into the Greek con-ception of a world complete within itself, one that does not need toseek the boon that communion with one who is radically other oVers.He is worth quoting at some length: 70 The Dynamic Personalism of AquinasThe consequences of making this kind of division and providing this kind ofoption are quick to follow.Henceforward all the values of the supernaturalorder, all those which characterize the present relationship between man andGod in our economy of grace, will be gradually reabsorbed into that purelynatural order that has been imagined (and I say imagined advisedly).Inthat order as in the other we will Wnd faith, prayer, the perfect virtues, theremission of sins by infused charity, grace, divine friendship, spiritual unionwith God, disinterested love, and a docile abandonment to personal Love.In short, nothing is lacking.Nothing for there is even a revelation which,while supernatural in origin and mode, has none the less, owing to its object,always been entitatively natural. One may say, indeed, that the substitutionis complete but I prefer myself to say that the disguise is complete.Everything that now comes to us by the grace of God is thus withdrawnfrom the supernatural properly so called of our present economy, and naturalized at the risk of being attributed afresh to some special inter-vention by God according to a diVerent mode. No diYculty is found inspeaking of natural graces, natural contrition, of friendship with God tothe exclusion of grace [seclusa gratia] or purely naturally [in puris natur-alibus]; there seems no obstacle in conceiving of a disinterested love of God,a love that is most excellent [excellentissimus] and above all things [superomnia], directed towards the author of nature and existing as a fruit of pure nature.(de Lubac 1967: 39 40)12De Lubac correctly noted that the two tiers produced a Christianpicture that no longer spoke to the modern world, at least not in amanner that seemed to suggest that Christianity had anything tooVer the world.Remember that a world is a picture.It is thecollective, heuristic structure out of which human thought operates.Thought never exists apart from worlds of discourse, for the simplereason that discourse necessarily creates mutually aYrmed worlds.De Lubac trenchantly noted that the Christian proclamation isdependent, whether it avers to this or not, upon the heuristic worldin which it is preached.Operate in a world that Wnds grace mean-ingless, and there is little to proclaim.Interlocutors must Wrst sharea world in order for proclamation to occur.De Lubac pleaded,12 Burrell oVers a succinct philosophical variant on the necessity of God conceivedin distinction from the world (1986: 17). For if the distinction of God from the worldis treated as one in the world, then either God will be exalted at the expense of God sworld, or God will be seen as part of a necessary whole since in each case theattempt is to understand the entirety: God-plus-world. The Dynamic Personalism of Aquinas 71 Without dogmatically denying that there may be other possibilities,without rejecting any abstract hypothesis which might be a good wayof making certain truths more vivid to us, it is surely more simpleand reasonable, when working out a theological doctrine, not to tryto get away from reality as we know it (1967: 49 50).Has anyone ever been converted by a street preacher in TimesSquare? If the numbers of such converts are very, very small, it is simplybecause the preacher and the audience, while occupying the same streetcorner, do not share the same world.If the world of the person passingby is in order as it stands, how does one demand conversion of him orher as necessary in order to open the self to a world yet to come?De Lubac also addressed a parallel perplexity: the tendency inChristian theology to picture grace as an object, though a sublimeone.Such discourse supposes the imperfect analogy of a human gift,as though God, though inWnitely better and more powerful, stood inthe same relation to me as another man; as though his situation werecompletely exterior to me, so that he could only give me a present,a completely exterior gift (1967: 78).The problem with this image is that it only very crudely expressesthe transcendence of God.Recall the Tractarian picture of the world,which on this point corresponds to the Aristotelian.God cannot bean element of the world.Yet in the picture de Lubac criticizes, graceappears as an inner-worldly reality.Granted that the world depictedis multi-spheric, grace still appears as the transference of an entityfrom one hierarchical sphere into a second, with both spheres, thenatural and the supernatural, lying within the world.Contrast the medieval worldview with the modern, of whichWittgenstein s Tractatus is a particularly apt expression [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.After all, if the divine is necessarily co-involved with the human, if it is something that human nature mightdemand for its own completion, in what sense is it something morethan the human? As Aquinas put it, There is an end for which man isprepared by God which surpasses the proportion of human nature,that is, eternal life, which consists in the vision of God by His essence(De ver.q.27 a.2).The phrase exceeding the proportion of humannature (naturae humanae proportionem excedens) does not necessar-ily evoke static, parallel realms, though to the mind of de Lubac it wasjust such a picture that impinged itself upon the interpreters ofAquinas.De Lubac insisted that the Pauline paradox did not require thecreation of layered realms and, further, that the earliest strands ofChristian discourse did not speak of two realms.Wittgenstein isparticularly helpful here.Language, because it operates in the eddiesof language games, often impels us to say certain things, leaving uswith an inadequate picture unless these games are balanced by othersuch games.Grace can be gratuitous, an oVer to humanity thattranscends humanity without being an object imported into ourrealm from that of another.It s the wrong linguistic picture thatsuggests that objects are most real.De Lubac struggled to free the-ology from a dual-tiered image of God s relationship to the world,going so far as to suggest that the two tiers, which were designed tosafeguard the gratuity of grace, had led in the modern world to theutter gratuitousness, the superXuity, of grace.In other words, mod-ern scientiWc thought will inevitably slide back into the Greek con-ception of a world complete within itself, one that does not need toseek the boon that communion with one who is radically other oVers.He is worth quoting at some length: 70 The Dynamic Personalism of AquinasThe consequences of making this kind of division and providing this kind ofoption are quick to follow.Henceforward all the values of the supernaturalorder, all those which characterize the present relationship between man andGod in our economy of grace, will be gradually reabsorbed into that purelynatural order that has been imagined (and I say imagined advisedly).Inthat order as in the other we will Wnd faith, prayer, the perfect virtues, theremission of sins by infused charity, grace, divine friendship, spiritual unionwith God, disinterested love, and a docile abandonment to personal Love.In short, nothing is lacking.Nothing for there is even a revelation which,while supernatural in origin and mode, has none the less, owing to its object,always been entitatively natural. One may say, indeed, that the substitutionis complete but I prefer myself to say that the disguise is complete.Everything that now comes to us by the grace of God is thus withdrawnfrom the supernatural properly so called of our present economy, and naturalized at the risk of being attributed afresh to some special inter-vention by God according to a diVerent mode. No diYculty is found inspeaking of natural graces, natural contrition, of friendship with God tothe exclusion of grace [seclusa gratia] or purely naturally [in puris natur-alibus]; there seems no obstacle in conceiving of a disinterested love of God,a love that is most excellent [excellentissimus] and above all things [superomnia], directed towards the author of nature and existing as a fruit of pure nature.(de Lubac 1967: 39 40)12De Lubac correctly noted that the two tiers produced a Christianpicture that no longer spoke to the modern world, at least not in amanner that seemed to suggest that Christianity had anything tooVer the world.Remember that a world is a picture.It is thecollective, heuristic structure out of which human thought operates.Thought never exists apart from worlds of discourse, for the simplereason that discourse necessarily creates mutually aYrmed worlds.De Lubac trenchantly noted that the Christian proclamation isdependent, whether it avers to this or not, upon the heuristic worldin which it is preached.Operate in a world that Wnds grace mean-ingless, and there is little to proclaim.Interlocutors must Wrst sharea world in order for proclamation to occur.De Lubac pleaded,12 Burrell oVers a succinct philosophical variant on the necessity of God conceivedin distinction from the world (1986: 17). For if the distinction of God from the worldis treated as one in the world, then either God will be exalted at the expense of God sworld, or God will be seen as part of a necessary whole since in each case theattempt is to understand the entirety: God-plus-world. The Dynamic Personalism of Aquinas 71 Without dogmatically denying that there may be other possibilities,without rejecting any abstract hypothesis which might be a good wayof making certain truths more vivid to us, it is surely more simpleand reasonable, when working out a theological doctrine, not to tryto get away from reality as we know it (1967: 49 50).Has anyone ever been converted by a street preacher in TimesSquare? If the numbers of such converts are very, very small, it is simplybecause the preacher and the audience, while occupying the same streetcorner, do not share the same world.If the world of the person passingby is in order as it stands, how does one demand conversion of him orher as necessary in order to open the self to a world yet to come?De Lubac also addressed a parallel perplexity: the tendency inChristian theology to picture grace as an object, though a sublimeone.Such discourse supposes the imperfect analogy of a human gift,as though God, though inWnitely better and more powerful, stood inthe same relation to me as another man; as though his situation werecompletely exterior to me, so that he could only give me a present,a completely exterior gift (1967: 78).The problem with this image is that it only very crudely expressesthe transcendence of God.Recall the Tractarian picture of the world,which on this point corresponds to the Aristotelian.God cannot bean element of the world.Yet in the picture de Lubac criticizes, graceappears as an inner-worldly reality.Granted that the world depictedis multi-spheric, grace still appears as the transference of an entityfrom one hierarchical sphere into a second, with both spheres, thenatural and the supernatural, lying within the world.Contrast the medieval worldview with the modern, of whichWittgenstein s Tractatus is a particularly apt expression [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]